Monday, March 02, 2009

I've been away for months and unlike my previous absences where I explained away my lack of posting by personally showing up at the doorsteps of my twelve faithful readers hat in hand and bindle over the shoulder and admitting to letting them down with my laziness. However if they were willing to just give this lonely vagrant blogger a place to stay, a laptop to write with, a little encouragement and some vittles I wouldn't disappoint them again. Of course this led to people asking who I was and what I was doing on their doorstep and the polite few who let me in to their homes were paid back by having their couch defiled, their appliances stolen and empty cans of beans littered about the kitchen. I had an opportunity to win back my readers trust and I blew it. This time though I have a legitimate excuse for neglecting my website for an obscene amount of time. It started off innocently enough when I travelled to the United Nations General Assembly to clear up a simple case of mistaken identity. Next thing I know the diplomat I'm talking to gets a knife thrown into his back, I'm accused of murdering him and I'm stowing away on a train bound for Chicago where I spend the night making love to a flirtatious young blond. Things just got crazier from there. I got shot at by a crop duster while traveling through rural northern Indiana (which, come to think of it really isnt that odd) and got into a fistfight at an auction for expensive artwork in Chicago before everything culminated in a wrestling match between a surprisingly strong and agile 77 year old Martin Landau and I on the side of Lincoln's face atop Mt. Rushmore. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises everything is fine now, my name has been cleared and as a bonus I'm proud to announce my recent engagement to the stunning Eva Marie Saint.-O.k. I must admit something. None of what I wrote in that first paragraph, aside from soiling my friends couch, is true. Yes, yes I know that's probably shocking to most of you that read this site and come to hear me regale my exciting adventures and epic journeys, such as my 2,000 word story about buying baseball cards from a homeless man at a Burger King drive-thru in Detroit. It's like I'm a modern day Sir Francis Drake or something. Anyways I just inserted myself into the role of Cary Grant in the famous and very entertaining North by Northwest, which was one of the many movies I watched during the months long depression that followed after I found out I failed the bar exam in November. Once again I know what you're thinking, partly because of the new mind reading device I've been tinkering with the past few weeks but mostly because you're so damn predictable (right now you're thinking about how delicious toast is and you're regretting skipping out on breakfast in lieu of the 9 more minutes of sleep you got for hitting the snooze button, you're that easy). You're probably thinking or rather standing up and shouting, "But Andrew you're the smartest man I know and if the Board of Examiners tested on the subjects that were actually important to the practice of law such as looks, personality, wit, taste in food and clothes and how to properly cut an onion you would be aces." Unfortunately they didn't test those subjects last summer, nor did they hit on any of my other areas of expertise like old Tigers statistics, Raul Julia's filmography and how to make cocaine. I spent hours listening to ClipseCD's and spent several hundred dollars enrolling in that bar review course run by a group of violent gang members who used to hang out in front of my building for absolutely nothing. Instead they asked about things called "Trusts" and "Secured Transactions" which surprisingly has nothing to do with confident transsexuals. Who knew.

With that being said it should come as no surprise that in early November I received a large first class envelope with a letter inside informing me that I had failed the bar exam but was more than welcome to come back and take it again in February. Now in all honesty there have been many times in my life that I have felt like a failure. When I've gotten bad grades, when I've been dumped by my girlfriend, when my parents call me a failure on my birthday every year, or the other night when I was in my apartment watching Extra at 3 A.M. as Mario Lopez profiled how to get in the best shape of your life with the advice of 20 something year old trainers as I sat on the couch with my obese cat laying on my chest picking out the Krackel's from a bag of Hershey's miniatures. It was exactly like that Garfield comic strip when John Arbuckle hangs himself with his belt in the last panel. However this was the first time my failure had been spelled out in bold caps on a piece of paper and mailed to my house first class. I didnt handle it well and for about two weeks I sat in complete darkness in my apartment, watched a million movies through Netflix and ate Shells and Cheese directly from the pan before finally deciding to re-dedicate myself to studying and passing the bar exam when I retook the damn thing in February.

I also had to move away from my beloved Detroit as the lease on my apartment (which was about a mile away from Comerica) was expiring and the job market in Metro Detroit wasn't exactly the best place for a 25 year old with almost zero work experience to find a job. So I went to the library and researched for vibrant cities with a rising population, a robust job market, a ton of young professionals and many attractive young women. The one city that came up every time was Flint, Michigan. So I rushed due north 80 miles and signed a lease at the first building I saw with a now leasing sign hanging in the window. Much to my dismay I later found out that the book I was researching out of was published in 1957, which I should have realized when it said by 1999 1/2 the worlds population will have relocated to the moon accompanied with a cartoon of Bob Hope and Dwight Eisenhower playing golf in space cadet suits with alien caddies. Oh well it's not like Flint is without its perks. The 25% unemployment rate within the city makes drugs more accessible, dangerous and cheaper than they ever were in Detroit, Halo Burger is the most amazing fast food restaurant in the world and Flint boasts the highest amount of soiled matresses laying on the side of the road per capita than any other city of 100,000+ in the North America (take that Mexico City!!).

This is all just a long way of saying I have nothing to do now. So I thought I would dust off the old blog and get back into chronicling the Tigers season and posting other odds and ends before the fumes from the meth lab above my apartment rot my brain and teeth to the point of not being able to communicate. This should be fun.